building a stylish home, one paycheck at a time

September 17, 2015January 13, 2016

current project: living room stairs

Here are the bent spiraling spines of our stairs, February 2011. We had Albina Co., Inc. bend 3 super thick tubes of steel. Don’t ask me how Bryce figured out these calculations to get them to twist like this and still fit in our stairwell.

So years ago Bryce asked a local stair company to give us a bid on 3 staircases residing in a round section of the house, completely walled in windows. The stairs had to spiral and float for 3 levels. The local stair company quoted us $100,000 for completion. That was definitely a no-go for my “frugal” husband. So we spent 4 years with an ugly set of temporary stairs.

Over those years, Bryce somehow masterminded these steel stairs. So far we’ve spent $9,000 on them for steel, welding and treads. The treads are the same glue lams as in the below picture (the beams in the ceilings). Eventually we will lacquer the steps and paint the vertical railing rods black to match the bent steel stringers.